


Still An Innocent

by longlivejohnlock (Sherlockxxxx)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anti Grant Ward, Coping, Dissociation, Female Friendship, Forgiveness, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Hive, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mental Breakdown, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Non-Canonical Character Death, Recovery, Sparring, anti Skyeward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 02:59:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6735151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlockxxxx/pseuds/longlivejohnlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a month since Daisy broke free from HIVE's influence and now she must deal with the consequences of her actions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still An Innocent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JoyScott13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoyScott13/gifts).



> Just a note about the character death: 
> 
> It's off-screen, there's no details about how it happens, no gory details. That being said, it is a main character and if you need to know who it is before you read, do message me and I can tell you :)
> 
> Oh and there's a couple mentions about blood, in case anybody needs a trigger warning :)

_You are not who they said you were.  
  
_ It’s been over a month since Daisy had returned to S.H.I.E.L.D, but every morning, she still had to reaffirm who she was as opposed to the person they made her into. She was lucky in some ways -- she came back physically unharmed. But what HIVE did to her psychologically was another story. A number of different ‘trauma experts’ that Coulson made her meet with all told her the very same thing. That she would never be the woman she was before this happened. Before her free-will was unceremoniously hijacked. The things she did… well. The demons that had set up camp in her brain were there to stay. The insides of her mind were permanently scarred, forever damaged.   
  
Looking in the mirror was especially painful -- so painful that some days, she avoided any mirror she came across. Her appearance hadn’t changed but when she saw herself, she was different. The shine in her eyes had vanished and it almost seemed like she had a dark aura around her at all times. Like the blackest cloud hung over her head. Some days, it even felt visible to everybody else.  
  
One of her saving graces through her recovery, however, were the early morning sparring sessions with May. It was the perfect place to go to turn off all of her feelings and all of her thoughts, and on the off chance she couldn’t ignore them, at least she could unleash them. And May never judged her for that.  
  
Daisy rolled out of bed and changed into her exercise clothes. She grabbed her duffel bag full of boxing gear and flew out of the room, rushing to the sparring gym. It made her sick to think of bumping into anybody this early in the morning -- she just wasn’t mentally prepared. It hurt. It hurt every single time she had a conversation with Jemma. Anybody from the team, really, but Jemma specifically. They had spoken since Daisy had returned but… it wasn’t the same.  
  
It never would be again. Not after… not after.  
  
By the time she reached the gym, she was overcome with emotion and she wasn’t sure she would be able to control it today. The ground was already shaking as she nearly ran to meet May. It had taken so much effort and time and patience to be able to control her powers before HIVE infected her, and now it was like starting over. She was just glad she had Lincoln to help her again.  
  
She was positive she would have withered away without May and Lincoln. And Mack, too. It was hard to open up to her field partner about what had happened and the things she had done but he risked everything to bring her back, so she was trying. God, she was trying so hard.  
  
“It’s going to be a rough one today, isn’t it?” May asked as Daisy entered, eyebrow raised.  
  
Daisy looked up, eyes rimmed red from rubbing them raw and constant restless nights.  
  
“You know, if you just talked to Simmons, I’m sure she could make something to help with the nightmares. You look like hell.”  
  
The mere thought of that filled her with sorrow and regret, but the feelings quickly turned to rage. Rage that May would even bring Simmons up when she knew -- she **knew** it wasn’t that simple. She glared at May and dropped her duffel on the floor, annoyed. Clearly, May had a point. Because when Daisy dropped her bag, cracks appeared on the cement around it.  
  
“Shit,” Daisy muttered, embarrassed. “Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be sorry, just start wrapping up.”  
  
“I still don’t understand why I have to. We never used to.”  
  
“That’s when you were still in control, Daisy. When you knew your limits and could keep injuries to a minimum. You _know_ you’re not in control righ--”  
  
“I’m so tired of hearing that!” Daisy exploded, the room around them shaking. “You have no idea, May, you have no idea! This is me, finally, being in control!”  
  
“Alright, it was a poor choice of words,” May conceded. “All I’m saying is that your emotions are still getting in the way when we spar. And that’s what we want. We want to get through that. And until we do, wrap your damn hands.”  
  
Muttering curse words under her breath, Daisy rummaged through her bag until she found her favourite purple wraps and began looping them and circling them around her fingers and wrists.  
  
The first time she had learned how to wrap her hands was when Ward was her partner. That memory made her left eye twitch. Even under HIVE, her violent dislike of Grant Ward never went away. He was still the man who betrayed the team. He was still the man that repeatedly tried to kill the only family she’s ever truly known. He was still the man who betrayed her and disappointed her in ways she didn’t know were possible. Any happy memories of him that she might have had were all tainted. And this was something she thought of every morning as she wrapped up before training.  
  
It was like shampooing her brain every god damn day. All of the thoughts that ran wild in her head were thoughts she had day after day. Rinse, lather, and repeat. Every single day.  
  
Wincing at the jungle that was her mind, she velcro'ed her wraps and took her stance in front of May, ready to let out the steam that was building in her body.  
  
“Ready?” May challenged.  
  
Daisy just nodded, her teeth clenched as she held her fists in the proper position.  
  
They held eye contact and when May felt Daisy was ready, she raised her left hand ready to receive Daisy’s jab. Next, May raised her right hand and Daisy knew that meant a right cross. They continued to warm up, Daisy throwing punches based on the position of May’s hand. Every so often, May would throw one back and Daisy would have to dodge it.  
  
“Use your hips more!”  
  
And Daisy obliged, her fists hitting with more force as she twisted her hips.  
  
When Daisy had first started sparring again, her stamina was next to nothing. The amount of energy it took to flush the infection from her body was the equivalent of being severely anemic. It took a solid week before she felt like she could even get out of bed. Now, after about three weeks of training with May, their warm-ups lasted about ten minutes with only two or three breaks -- breaks that lasted forty-five seconds at most.  
  
She already felt lighter than she did earlier but something was still weighing on her -- something was still lingering over her. That wasn’t something she normally felt until they were finished for the day, but it was a feeling she couldn’t seem to shake right now.  
  
Daisy shook her head a bit after sipping on her bottle full of ice water, hoping to rattle her mind around a bit. Obviously, she knew that’s not exactly how it worked, but she tried anyway. And as usual, May didn’t miss a beat.  
  
“Something on your mind?” May asked.  
  
“No, nothing,” Daisy replied, a little too quickly. “Nothing at all.”  
  
“Oh, well, in that case, shall we continue?”  
  
Daisy capped her bottle and set it down, getting back into position. The easy part of the training was done. Now it was time to do some true sparring. This was when May didn’t hold back and she encouraged Daisy not to hold back as well. The only rule was that Daisy had to throw the first fist.  
  
And so she did.  
  
Unsurprisingly, she missed. Everybody in S.H.I.E.L.D liked to act like they were on par with May and her combat skills. Nobody was, though. Bobbi was probably the only one who came close to rivalling her, but now she was disavowed and gone.  
  
From when she became part of the team, so much had happened to all of them and their heroes were slowly dwindling. Only three members of their original team remained -- excluding Daisy. She wasn’t sure she’d even include herself. She was a different person when she joined the organization. It felt like a lifetime ago. Everything had been ripped from her. And because of that, she was the reason someone else lost everything.   
  
The anger that she felt in her blood and the guilt she felt deep in her bones became too much for her to handle and she started blindly punching, sobbing in-between the screams that escaped her lungs every time her fists hit air.  
  
“Daisy!”  
  
But she barely heard May. She barely heard anything over the sound of her thoughts, or her heart that was pounding like a drum. Daisy was overflowing with emotion, emotion that she didn’t want to have to work through, emotion that she wanted to be rid from her body.  
  
The knuckles on her left hand cracked loudly as she connected with May’s ribs, but she kept hitting. The surely broken knuckles were nothing compared to the brokenness she felt inside.  
  
“ _DAISY!”  
  
_ Daisy still didn’t react. She still didn’t snap out of the dissociative state she had somehow found herself in. It was like an out of body experience. She could see herself punching at May, at the air, at anything she could, but she only saw herself from a distance.  
  
“It’s all my fault,” Daisy wailed as she crumpled to her knees.  
  
She was sure to wake up with bruises and scrapes the next morning. Daisy hit the ground so hard, her knees made divots in the ground.  
  
“Daisy! _STOP!”  
  
_ May’s hands on her shoulders startled her and she came back to herself. Daisy was terrified. She had never had an episode like this, and she had not been in control. Again. She was so tired of not being in control of her thoughts or her body. It wasn’t something anybody should ever have to experience.  
  
“D-don’t call me Daisy anymore,” she whispered, broken. “Please.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I don’t want to be Daisy anymore. I want to be Skye again.”  
  
“Changing your name again isn’t going to erase what happened, Daisy.”  
  
“The minute I killed Fitz is the minute I stopped being Daisy,” she spat at May.  
  
That was the first time she had said those words aloud. Everybody knew what she had done while under the control of HIVE, but nobody said it. Coulson assured her almost every time he saw her that nobody held her accountable for it -- that nobody blamed her. But who else was to blame? The easy answer is HIVE and Hydra. The easy answer is to blame people like Gideon Malick who unleashed their desires for global destruction. But that was just the easy answer. The way to avoid responsibility for what she had done.  
  
Because truthfully, in the moment, she wanted to kill him. The thing about the mind control was that it wasn’t exactly mind control. For all intents and purposes, she wasn’t brainwashed. That’s not how it scientifically worked. It was more like an addiction, and it heightened all of the feelings she harboured. A fleeting moment of wishing Fitz would die resulted in his actual death. If she didn’t feel so bonded to HIVE, if she didn’t have an overwhelming need to please HIVE, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. But that urge to not disappoint her team members, her _family_ , were always a persistent weakness. It was always there. And this addiction used it against her. It used all of her insecurities against her, and that was something she couldn’t blame anybody else for.  
  
“Daisy, it wa--”  
  
“Don’t. Call me. That.”  
  
“It wasn’t your fault.”  
  
“I can’t _do_ this, May,” Skye groaned. “I’m not strong enough. Not anymore.”  
  
“I don’t know about that, I’m pretty sure you cracked my ribs,” May joked before turning serious again. “Listen to me, alright?”  
  
Skye nodded slowly, suddenly very tired.  
  
“If you want to be Skye again, you need to know that the Skye we were introduced to was as tough as nails. You did things and yes, they were _awful_ , but the fact that you’re sitting here in front of me shows me how fucking strong you are.”  
  
“Simmons will never forgive me. I took...I took everything from her.”  
  
“If you would just talk to her, you would know she already has.”  
  
Skye watched as May stood up and left the gym, presumably to not only make a point, but also to get Simmons to check her ribs. With great effort, Skye slowly stood up and looked at her knees, covered in dried blood and bruises already starting to form. She unwrapped her hands and looked at her knuckles which were throbbing and red.   
  
Maybe this was the perfect time to go see Simmons.   
  
She started towards the door, wincing at the pain she felt on her knees. Damn, that was going to hurt in the morning. But it didn’t matter. She took a deep breath and continued on, walking out the door and down the hall to the lab. Before she went in, she observed from the window. May had her shirt rolled up and Simmons was already wrapping a white bandage around May’s midsection. Skye cleared her throat as she entered the room.  
  
Simmons turned around abruptly, startled, while smugness washed over May’s face.  
  
“Oh! Hi, Daisy,” Simmons greeted, though clearly taken aback.  
  
“It’s...uhm. It’s Skye again.”  
  
“Oh, alright, then,” she smiled. “Can I help you with something?"  
  
“Yeah,” Skye mumbled. “I, uhm, need some patching up, if you have some time?”  
  
“Of course! Take a seat! I’ll be done with May in a second.”  
  
Awkwardly, Skye shuffled to a chair near Simmons and May, watching as Simmons taped the bandage in place.  
  
“Thanks, Simmons,” May said. “Same time tomorrow, Skye?”  
  
“I’ll be there,” Skye answered.  
  
“You won’t need your wraps.”  
  
Skye scrunched her face in confusion before realizing this must have been May’s plan all along. She must have known this is what would happen if she kept pushing Skye, allowing her to ignore those feelings that she had stuffed so far down. It was all a plan to overload her system with every emotion she had been feeling for the last month. That knowledge in itself made her _furious_ , but she also felt like she was about to be free. Or at least, as free as she could be.  
  
“So, what happened?”  
  
“I fell,” Skye grumbled. “Hard.”  
  
“Clearly!”  
  
Jemma dabbed a cotton pad, lightly coated with hydrogen peroxide, against the abrasions and Skye sucked in a breath, hissing. It stung. Something like this wouldn’t have bothered her six months ago. Everything was like starting over. _Everything_. It made her feel frustrated beyond comprehension. Gently, Simmons covered each knee with large piece of gauze and taped it down with medical tape.  
  
“Anything else?”  
  
“Yeah, uhm, the knuckles on my left hand. I don’t know if you can even do anything for them.”  
  
“Well, let’s take a look, shall we?”  
  
Skye raised her arm and held out her hand. Her knuckles had light scraping across them, but mostly they were swollen and bruises were already starting to show. When Jemma gently held Skye’s hand in both of hers, maneuvering it until Skye’s knuckles were fully in the light. The ache in the pit of her stomach was quickly becoming unbearable, as was the knot of nerves prodding her from the inside. Or maybe that was just her heartbeat. She wasn’t quite sure.  
  
“I think you just need to ice it. Maybe don’t use this hand tomorrow,” Simmons chuckled lightly.  
  
Her kindness was just too much.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Jemma, oh God, I’m so sorry,” Skye blurted out.  
  
“I know you are, Dais-- Skye.”  
  
“I’ll never forgive myself for what I’ve done. Never.”  
  
Simmons pulled Skye in for a bone-crushing hug, squeezing her tightly.  
  
“What’s done is done,” Jemma whispered. “Sometimes it hurts to look at you. Knowing what...what you did. I know the science behind all of it, but sometimes it still hurts.”  
  
“You must hate me so much,” Skye whispered back, her voice cracking.  
  
“I don’t. And Fitz wouldn’t want me to. He __loved you, Skye, you were his friend. He would never want this guilt to eat away at you, not after everything you’ve been through.”  
  
“But what about what you’ve been through? I … he was your… I took him from you.”  
  
“Yes,” Simmons agreed. “You did.”  
  
“You ha--”  
  
“Let me finish. You did take him from me. But you know what he did? He gave us you. That’s how I’m choosing to look at it. He was my best friend and he was… he was the one. And it’s going to hurt for a long time -- both of us -- but I could never hate you, Skye.”  
  
Those words were what finally freed Skye from the cage she was held in. Those words were what she needed to hear so she could grieve. It didn’t feel right before. To mourn the person you killed. Especially when the love of his life resided in the same building. But now she knew she could. She knew she could cry and that it was okay. She felt guilt about his death, and she probably always would. There’s no cure for that. But she didn’t have to feel guilty about crying over what she did, or who she lost, or what she took from the people she loved.  
  
Healing was going to be a journey. The longest journey she’s ever faced -- longer than becoming a member of S.H.I.E.L.D, longer than her search for her parents, longer than the discovery of her powers. Nothing could compare to this.  
  
But at least she wouldn’t have to do it alone.


End file.
